Elfs, Dwarfs, Gnomes, Orcs

[Emphyrio]

Inherent to the appeal of fantasy is the exploration of the exotic. So why has the medieval fantasy game developed "standard" races? This thankfully didn't happen for the sci-fi side of things. It also hasn't happened in medieval fantasy films or books except the ones based on games.

Medieval fantasy is entitled to some wiggle room because some of this is just drawing from common folklore. The issue is not so much about the words elf, dwarf, or gnome. But many games stick entirely to the 20th century interpretation of these races. I have never seen a short elf, or an elf with animal parts, and only seen dwarfs depicted as skilled with magic a couple of times. "Orcs" are an entirely 20th century invention with almost no basis in folklore (they have turned into something different from goblins).

It seems that the "standard" races aren't popular with the younger generation, who prefer to play as anything else that's new and exotic: teiflings, dragonguys, or the god-head things in Pillows.

The "standard" medieval fantasy races are common in gaming in general, not just RPGs. They may be even more prevalent in strategy games. Why are the "standard" races particular to gaming?

Now that Africanized elves are a thing we've just about reached peak retardation. Would using a fantasy race endemic to Africa be colonialist?

[KnightoftheWind]

Ironically when people talk about how "generic" fantasy is, they don't realize just how many subversive entries there are in the genre. We have a lot more Dark Souls than we do Narnia or The Lord of the Rings. And in the realm of video games, only Oblivion and the Fable trilogy come to mind when I think of high fantasy titles. They are a rare breed despite how many people think they're a dime a dozen.

It'd be refreshing to see honest, high fantasy depictions of elves, dwarves, etc.

[rusty_shackleford]

only Oblivion and the Fable trilogy come to mind when I think of high fantasy titles.

Oblivion still has the "muh deep lore" baggage of morrowind which is reddit-tier.

[KnightoftheWind]

only Oblivion and the Fable trilogy come to mind when I think of high fantasy titles.

Oblivion still has the "muh deep lore" baggage of morrowind which is reddit-tier.

I think you can get away with not caring about Elder Scrolls lore when playing Oblivion. It's well known that the backstory of Tamriel and it's provinces can radically change from game-to-game despite attempts by former writers to craft a cohesive world. D*ggerfalll's lore was also upended when Morrowind launched, so it's not surprising that Todd Howard chose to jettison it's narrative too. For the better, honestly.

[rusty_shackleford]

only Oblivion and the Fable trilogy come to mind when I think of high fantasy titles.

Oblivion still has the "muh deep lore" baggage of morrowind which is reddit-tier.

I think you can get away with not caring about Elder Scrolls lore when playing Oblivion. It's well known that the backstory of Tamriel and it's provinces can radically change from game-to-game despite attempts by former writers to craft a cohesive world. D*ggerfalll's lore was also upended when Morrowind launched, so it's not surprising that Todd Howard chose to jettison it's narrative too. For the better, honestly.

The so-called "deep lore" is present in every game morrowind and beyond. Thankfully, it can be completely ignored and most people are entirely oblivious to vivek having his head ripped off and a penis shoved inside it.

[General Reign]

Morrowind is pretty good but I think people dote on it a little too much. Then again I cannot comprehend how people enjoy Oblivion in 2023 either. I only enjoyed it due to having to play it on a ****** 360 that then red ringed to death.

Fantasy is only generic outside of those great things called BOOKS.

[rusty_shackleford]

Then again I cannot comprehend how people enjoy Oblivion in 2023 either.

Same way I enjoy a campy B movie.
Also, radiant AI was the last attempt in any major game to do something interesting with AI, it has only gotten worse since. Gamedevs are now so afraid of failure they don't try.

[General Reign]

Then again I cannot comprehend how people enjoy Oblivion in 2023 either.

Same way I enjoy a campy B movie.
Also, radiant AI was the last attempt in any major game to do something interesting with AI, it has only gotten worse since. Gamedevs are now so afraid of failure they don't try.

It's not the camp it's the lack of meaningful content without mods. I do not want to suffer through modding it now so I just do not bother. Skyrim would be fun with hypothermia and stuff but the actual game makes me sad when I see HUGE battles with 5 people.

[Emphyrio]

Ironically when people talk about how "generic" fantasy is, they don't realize just how many subversive entries there are in the genre. We have a lot more Dark Souls than we do Narnia or The Lord of the Rings. And in the realm of video games, only Oblivion and the Fable trilogy come to mind when I think of high fantasy titles. They are a rare breed despite how many people think they're a dime a dozen.

It'd be refreshing to see honest, high fantasy depictions of elves, dwarves, etc.

Is "subversive" a deliberately chosen word? It implies that there's a standard, ordinary rule to contravene. If aping Lord of the Rings is by some considered "subversive" that's the whole problem.

But even Narnia wasn't stuck in the "standard" races rut and it's a very different setting from the standard medieval fantasy setting. Few games have satyrs, or talking animals as the rule.

If you're seeking a game with "honest" 20th century depictions of elfs and dwarfs, just recently there have been the Pathfinders, the Pillows, Original Sin 2, BG3, Black Geyser, Solasta, and probably several more of which I'm ignorant. That's just RPGs.

[Acrux]

Oblivion still has the "muh deep lore" baggage of morrowind which is reddit-tier.

I think you can get away with not caring about Elder Scrolls lore when playing Oblivion. It's well known that the backstory of Tamriel and it's provinces can radically change from game-to-game despite attempts by former writers to craft a cohesive world. D*ggerfalll's lore was also upended when Morrowind launched, so it's not surprising that Todd Howard chose to jettison it's narrative too. For the better, honestly.

The so-called "deep lore" is present in every game morrowind and beyond. Thankfully, it can be completely ignored and most people are entirely oblivious to vivek having his head ripped off and a penis shoved inside it.

Kirkbride delenda est

[Rigwort]

Kirkbride was only good as a concept artist. I remember "A Dance in Fire" much better than any of his CHIM wanking. But he WAS a good concept artist as long as he had a guy as corporate as Todd reigning him in, even if a lot of stuff that made it in just looks like fantasy Star Wars.

[KnightoftheWind]

Ironically when people talk about how "generic" fantasy is, they don't realize just how many subversive entries there are in the genre. We have a lot more Dark Souls than we do Narnia or The Lord of the Rings. And in the realm of video games, only Oblivion and the Fable trilogy come to mind when I think of high fantasy titles. They are a rare breed despite how many people think they're a dime a dozen.

It'd be refreshing to see honest, high fantasy depictions of elves, dwarves, etc.

Is "subversive" a deliberately chosen word? It implies that there's a standard, ordinary rule to contravene. If aping Lord of the Rings is by some considered "subversive" that's the whole problem.

But even Narnia wasn't stuck in the "standard" races rut and it's a very different setting from the standard medieval fantasy setting. Few games have satyrs, or talking animals as the rule.

If you're seeking a game with "honest" 20th century depictions of elfs and dwarfs, just recently there have been the Pathfinders, the Pillows, Original Sin 2, BG3, Black Geyser, Solasta, and probably several more of which I'm ignorant. That's just RPGs.

All modern fantasy has lineage in classic works like The Lord of the Rings. That is where our conception of elves, orcs, dwarves, etc comes from, and the de-facto medieval fantasy aesthetic as we understand it today. So all deviant works of fantasy, like Dark Souls, can be considered a subversive take on the ideas presented by J.R.R Tolkien, because they take ideas presented by him (and even C.S Lewis to a lesser extent) and parody them. Turning them into a twisted mockery in whatever grand story they have in mind. When a game developer or writer wants to produce a fantasy work, he inevitably draws inspiration from LOTR, even if he himself hasn't read the books or seen any of the movies he's likely seen something that was made by someone influenced by it. If you were developing a new first-person shooter game for instance, you inevitably draw inspiration from Doom even if you haven't played it, because it laid out a lot of the concepts still present in modern FPS games today.

Everyone wants to be the next Rian Johnson and subvert our heckin' expectations with yet another edgy tale, without realizing that their ideas are the ones that are common and overused, not the so-called "generic" fantasy aesthetic.

[Tweed]

Inherent to the appeal of fantasy is the exploration of the exotic. So why has the medieval fantasy game developed "standard" races? This thankfully didn't happen for the sci-fi side of things. It also hasn't happened in medieval fantasy films or books except the ones based on games.

Medieval fantasy is entitled to some wiggle room because some of this is just drawing from common folklore. The issue is not so much about the words elf, dwarf, or gnome. But many games stick entirely to the 20th century interpretation of these races. I have never seen a short elf, or an elf with animal parts, and only seen dwarfs depicted as skilled with magic a couple of times. "Orcs" are an entirely 20th century invention with almost no basis in folklore (they have turned into something different from goblins).

It seems that the "standard" races aren't popular with the younger generation, who prefer to play as anything else that's new and exotic: teiflings, dragonguys, or the god-head things in Pillows.

The "standard" medieval fantasy races are common in gaming in general, not just RPGs. They may be even more prevalent in strategy games. Why are the "standard" races particular to gaming?

Now that Africanized elves are a thing we've just about reached peak retardation. Would using a fantasy race endemic to Africa be colonialist?

Something something Dungeons and Dragons. Everyone borrowed from Gygax and by proxy, Tolkein at the start so naturally it became the defacto set of races. It also helps that elves, dwarves, gnomes, and halflings are all quite human so they're easy to stick into your fantasy setting if you don't want to do a lot of thinking, they're completely safe. However, various fantasy games even back in the 80s did stuff like orcs and trolls though, along with some other oddballs here and there. Dungeon Master was one of the first to do the cosmetic race thing. You had humans, elves, etc, but you also had Nazghul looking guys, gnolls, lizards, and so on. Chaos Strikes Back went even more exotic with straight up undead, insects, birdmen, and the like. Cosmetic races are a crime, but DM can be forgiven for being cosmetic considering the age and the needless hassle it would have been to add racial modifiers on top of a system that already worked well enough.

When you look at material like the Book of Humanoids for Second Edition, it's clear that a lot of the various new races were designed as challenges and ways for a DM to add some variety to the party. The mindsets of players back then would have been to take on playing something like a Firbolg or an Ogre Mage for the fun of it, not for min maxing stats or being special. These days you have a lot more people who just aren't happy with themselves and they're looking for any kind of escape. They're not really interested in roleplaying or challenging themselves, they're interested in inserting a better version of themselves into the game.

That said, your boilerplate fantasy races can get tiresome. Generic_Tolkien_Elf_50199 with bows and trees and Generic_Tolkien_Dwarf_99542 with a Scottish accent have kind of been done to death.

[Vlajdimir Ermenović]

The solution for devs is less /vrpg/ and more /x/.

[Humbaba]

40k renders all other settings obsolete so why would anyone care?

[WhiteShark]

Inherent to the appeal of fantasy is the exploration of the exotic. So why has the medieval fantasy game developed "standard" races? This thankfully didn't happen for the sci-fi side of things. It also hasn't happened in medieval fantasy films or books except the ones based on games.

I don't think fantasy games are usually going for the 'exploration of the exotic' so much as using a familiar setting in which to set a game. Also, I'm not at all familiar with current fantasy literature, but has it really gotten away from the 'standard' races? The way I see it, there are only so many racial archetypes available before they just turn into completely unrelateable aliens, something more fit for science fiction than fantasy.

[Emphyrio]

Also, I'm not at all familiar with current fantasy literature, but has it really gotten away from the 'standard' races? The way I see it, there are only so many racial archetypes available before they just turn into completely unrelateable aliens, something more fit for science fiction than fantasy.

In fantasy literature the "standard" races were hardly ever a thing if you don't count game novelizations. Even the popular epic fantasy series of the 70's and 80's that are considered shameless rip-offs of LOTR, like Belgariad, Thomas Convenant, and Wheel of Time, don't do the "standard" races (I haven't read them but that's my understanding). The most popular male fantasy writer today is Brandon Sanderson, and he also doesn't do elfs and dwarfs despite being a huge Tolkien fanboy.

Look at the "Fantasy Masterworks Collection", how many of these have elfs in them? I've read about half of these. A few that have elves: The Iron Dragon's Daughter, The King of Elfland's Daughter, Corum. Those are all based on folktales about elfs, not Tolkien elfs. I guess that I should say D&D elfs, because Tolkein's elfs are closer to folktale elfs than those are.

What teenage boys are reading now is something called "litRPG", it's basically novels about people who are sucked into games. Kinda like Sword Art Online, the old D&D cartoon, or Erfworld. They might have more elfs and dwarfs because that's how games are, but I don't know, I don't read that stuff.

Even in film there aren't many elfs and dwarfs except movies that are based on Tolkein or D&D. I can think of... Hawk the Slayer, that had one elf in it. Lodross War and the Witcher series. What else? There's probably 10 Conan-style barbarian movies for every movie with elfs in it.

[maidenhaver]

Then again I cannot comprehend how people enjoy Oblivion in 2023 either.

Same way I enjoy a campy B movie.
Also, radiant AI was the last attempt in any major game to do something interesting with AI, it has only gotten worse since. Gamedevs are now so afraid of failure they don't try.

We can't have mythological perverts.

[maidenhaver]

Elves, dwarves, halflings, orcs, etc were mistakes. The only species we need is human. There are *******, dagos, nips, mongoloids, cholos, and whites all with different strengths and weaknesses, cultures, etc to draw from. There's no need for men with pointed ears, short men, shorter men, green men, men who live underground, men with animal heads, etc.

[Lich]

It's more about want than need. I want dwarfs in my games.

[Emphyrio]

Elves, dwarves, halflings, orcs, etc were mistakes. The only species we need is human. There are *******, dagos, nips, mongoloids, cholos, and whites all with different strengths and weaknesses, cultures, etc to draw from. There's no need for men with pointed ears, short men, shorter men, green men, men who live underground, men with animal heads, etc.

Nonhuman races can have game mechanics that wouldn't make sense for non-magical humans. Giants, extra arms, flight, breathing underwater, spitting fireballs, mindreading, tracking smells, turning into a tree, travelling through time, whatever.

But I certainly understand that it's not always aesthetically pleasing to have a party of circus freaks.

[Emphyrio]

It's more about want than need. I want dwarfs in my games.

I have never understood dwarf people. why?

[maidenhaver]

It's more about want than need. I want dwarfs in my games.

They need to be a race of dwarves and just short men?

[Humbaba]

Humans are just tall dwarfs, remove humans.

[Lich]

It's more about want than need. I want dwarfs in my games.

I have never understood dwarf people. why?

Craftsmanship, friendship, honor.

[WhiteShark]

Look at the "Fantasy Masterworks Collection", how many of these have elfs in them? I've read about half of these.

And of these that avoid the 'standard' races, how many just use animal people instead?

[General Reign]

Of those that avoid the Elf race they usually use the Elf trope anyway often implying some sort of divine providence...it's all so tedious and for certain why I have never liked the vast majority of fantasy. Give me Conan or Krull (at one point I might have said Willow hah!) before I ever have to see something resembling Middle Earth again. I like the fantasy settings that switch the orcs out for cyclops.

[Emphyrio]

Look at the "Fantasy Masterworks Collection", how many of these have elfs in them? I've read about half of these.

And of these that avoid the 'standard' races, how many just use animal people instead?

Not sure what you mean by that. The way you're phrasing your question, it's like you're assuming that fantasy novels are structured like narratives of RPGs, all the diverse characters gather together at the beginning and then go on an adventure. And most fantasy novel plots aren't like that. A few of them have "animal people" in some sense that appear somewhere in the book, but "instead" of elves?

Of those that avoid the Elf race they usually use the Elf trope anyway often implying some sort of divine providence...it's all so tedious and for certain why I have never liked the vast majority of fantasy.

Huh? What are you talking about?

[General Reign]

Look at the "Fantasy Masterworks Collection", how many of these have elfs in them? I've read about half of these.

And of these that avoid the 'standard' races, how many just use animal people instead?

Not sure what you mean by that. The way you're phrasing your question, it's like you're assuming that fantasy novels are structured like narratives of RPGs, all the diverse characters gather together at the beginning and then go on an adventure. And most fantasy novel plots aren't like that. A few of them have "animal people" in some sense that appear somewhere in the book, but "instead" of elves?

Of those that avoid the Elf race they usually use the Elf trope anyway often implying some sort of divine providence...it's all so tedious and for certain why I have never liked the vast majority of fantasy.

Huh? What are you talking about?

Elves are often the pre-cursor race sent by whatever divine deity to whatever land to do divine ****. I hate to post this site but it has information that is valid...

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ElfTropes

The space version is a Vulcan.

[WhiteShark]

Not sure what you mean by that. The way you're phrasing your question, it's like you're assuming that fantasy novels are structured like narratives of RPGs, all the diverse characters gather together at the beginning and then go on an adventure. And most fantasy novel plots aren't like that. A few of them have "animal people" in some sense that appear somewhere in the book, but "instead" of elves?

No, that's not what I meant. My point was that even those works of fantasy that avoid the so-called 'standard races' tend to still draw from a slightly larger pool of common fictional races. I guess what I'm really getting at is that there's nothing new under the sun, so whether it's elves or lizardmen or something else, rarely does anything feel truly exotic.